Formal Exchange: The Albright-Knox Art Gallery and Latin America will examine Latin American abstraction from the 1960s and early ‘70s, and pay homage to the Gallery’s commitment to aquiring modern and contemporary art from all over the world.

Artists in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, and Venezuela responded with great interest to early developments in modern art and produced unusual, intriguing, and original work that questioned the presence and perception of art. Works by Martha Boto, Sergio de Camargo, Eduardo Mac Entyre, Julio Le Parc, Cesar Paternosto, Jesus Raphael Soto, Josefina Robirosa, and Luis Tomasello were in step with the developments of minimalism and op art — filled with intense formal invention and a profound revolution of materials — but with their own personality and set of questions.

In 1969, Seymour H. Knox, Jr. gave the Gallery eight paintings by Argentine artists. That same year, the Gallery sent 109 paintings to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where the works were viewed by 138,000 visitors in forty days. Continuing this important exchange of art and ideas across continents, Formal Exchange: The Albright-Knox Art Gallery and Latin America will open on February 17, 2006 as part of the city-wide consortium The Latin Connection: Arts Across Our Region.